


“Aideé Gardia, Seventh Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [21]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Handmaidens, Injury, Injury-related illness, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Prisoner of War, Sacrificial ethics, Torture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-20
Updated: 2007-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:46:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fifteen random but chronological moments from the life of Aideé Gardia, who is, quite literally, the seventh handmaiden in the third training class of potential handmaidens chosen from among a large pool of applicants for the job for the newly elected Nabooian Queen Padmé Amidala. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Aideé Gardia, Seventh Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Aideé Gardia’s life, as she is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series **_You Became to Me_**. If anything doesn’t make sense, please feel free to ask!
> 
>  **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, for anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , including my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Aideé Gardia’s eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I borrowed from somewhere or another on the LJ (I really don’t recall from where anymore, precisely, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not really meant to function as a response to whatever the challenge actually is that’s associated with said LJ prompt set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Aideé. **3.)** Readers might want to consider the fact that Aideé, like a lot of native Nabooians, is fairly strong in the Force, but that she hasn’t received any training whatsoever to speak of and so has no real conscious control over that sensitivity to the Force. **4.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for original characters like Aideé should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! For clarity’s sake, though, Aideé is physically modeled on a teenaged Gal Gadot, Kason Gardia can be pictured as a young (not quite eleven, at the time of the Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo) Matthew Rhys. Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name (certain family members of original characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish! **5.)** Handmaidens often tend to pair off, as is the case here, with Aideé Gardia and Etté Zirach, a fellow handmaiden from the same training class (hence, the relationship label for original female characters and the underage warning). **6.)** Speaking of pairings, I've labeled this story to indicate Padmé Amidala's love for Sabé, because, even though it may not be specifically mentioned in this character study piece, handmaid(en)s know so much about their sworn Lady that readers can be certain that Aideé, like all of Amidala's other handmaid(en)s, would have surely known about how much Amidala and Sabé love one another!
> 
>  **Story Notes:** **1.)** Since this is part of a larger on-going AU series that in some respects fairly closely mirrors or follows events of canon (up to a certain point, anyway), readers should please keep in mind that certain characters and events from the prequel movies/novelizations of the films and even events/places/people referenced in the EU or Expanded Universe may be mentioned or alluded to in this story. If anyone has any questions about whether someone or something is AU, canon, or EU canon, please feel free to ask! **2.)** Readers should probably be aware that I am roughly estimating (guestimating might be a better word) the original publication date for most of the character study pieces in the **_You Became to Me_** series (and indeed most of my stories, especially the ones written over a long period of time), based on when I roughed out notes for them in the story notebooks I carry everywhere with me and when I can recall having worked on certain groups of characters. The year is going to be accurate, but the month might be off and the day will almost certainly be randomly chosen, since the online account I had originally posted many of these stories to no longer exists. I tend to go back and edit things that are in series whenever I get the time or a new idea causes me to have to make room for something else plot-wise, and odds are good that a story could have been edited for typos as recently as the day of its posting here, but the original version will likely be much older and fairly close to the publication date that I attach to it, if anyone's curious!

**“Aideé Gardia, Seventh Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”**

 

 **01.) Storm:** Her parents were killed in a climbing accident about a month after her fifth birthday – a bad storm came up out of nowhere and triggered an avalanche of mud and rock that carried them and her older sister away – but there is a strong tradition of service and guardianship in her family’s past (her mother’s line – the Barakis family – is rather famous for producing companions to Kings and Queens of Naboo, and her father’s line is equally well-known for its soldiers and protectors), and she has long been determined to do her family proud, so, even though she has a baby brother to be thinking of, since she knows that her aunt and the rest of the Barakis clan will do well enough with Kason whether she specifically is there to look after him or not, she leaps at the chance to submit an application to be considered for training as one of the new Queen’s handmaidens.

 **02.) Prefer:** They would prefer to take girls without families, if they can (or at least girls whose contributions to the eventual growth and overall well-being of their families will not be too sorely missed), owing to the danger inherent in the handmaiden position; Aideé is patient and persistent and her credentials are very good, though, so she isn’t too surprised to eventually be accepted into the third class of handmaiden trainees.

 **03.) Tension:** She is at the Palace for most of two days, while the others in her class gradually trickle in, waiting until they are all present so they can be taken out to the place where they will be trained, and normally she would use the time to familiarize herself more with the Palace, but there is a certain amount of tension in the air that precludes the notion of wandering about alone, and the handmaidens from the first (and only fully trained) class are all too busy to be bothered, so she spends her time instead trying to get to know her fellow trainees and recording messages and short little vids for her little brother, Kason, to reassure him that she is alright and happy with her new position as a handmaiden trainee.

 **04.) Similar:** With her slim, somewhat petite build and dark hair and eyes, she looks enough like the Queen that she could easily make herself resemble her more closely, but there’s a girl in their training class who might actually _be_ the Queen, who is so very like Amidala that the Queen’s own blood kin might easily enough mistake them for each other, even without cosmetics to make them seem more similar to each other, and she also has all of the qualities and skills (in spades, even!) that are requisite to make a a good leader, so she will be happy enough to rally the class behind this girl, this Dormé Tammesin, so that Dormé will better be able to serve Amidala by being the most convincing decoy she can possibly be.

 **05.) Admiration:** She could quite easily come to love this Dormé – she is highly intelligent without in any way lacking in common sense, fiery, zealous, idealistic in a way that speaks of honor rather than naïvete, funny and unafraid of showing her wit, and, most of all, filled with a passionate need to excel and to serve their sworn lady that fills Aideé with unabashed admiration for the young teenager – though Dormé is, unfortunately, apparently wholly uninterested in any kind of romantic relationship and indeed oddly wary about friendships, as well, as if she’s largely unused to the idea of being able to depend on anyone but herself and actively dislikes the notion of trying to do so outside the context of alliances that obviously serve the Queen’s interests, her skittishness so profound that Aideé is forced to conclude that Dormé has not been treated well by those in her life and has too profound a distrust of her own worthiness and the trustworthiness of others to make it worth her while for her to try to convince her otherwise . . . at least not until Dormé has had a chance to get much more used to the idea of being able to safely lean on others in the class, anyway.

 **06.) Another:** There’s another girl in her training class, Etté Zirach, who resembles a slightly taller and duskier-complexioned version of Amidala, and she is sweet and kind and wryly funny and quite confident of herself and her abilities without ever quite crossing the line from self-assured to arrogant, and so Aideé decides that, given Dormé’s obvious disinterest in any kind of close relationship with anyone except the Queen and Sabé Dahn – the Queen’s primary decoy, who has taken an obvious interest in Dormé and has been behaving as something of a special mentor to her – Etté’s resemblance to the Queen, and Etté’s generous and confident nature, she should embrace the challenge of making Etté into Dormé’s possible emergency replacement, a sort of relief decoy for the decoy, in case anything should (Great Goddess forfend!) ever happen to Dormé to keep her from being available to serve Amidala as a replacement decoy for Sabé: this is how it comes to pass that, when the time finally comes for them to leave (for Varykino and a villa summerhouse of the Naberrie family, as it turns out), she’s already managed to form a loose coalition around Dormé, including herself and Etté and a pair of girls named Emmé and Betté who are already beginning to act like a formally bonded couple, and Aideé is extremely happy to note that four others seem likely to join them, though the final girl in their training group seems to think she should be the center of attention and certainly gives such an impression of self-centered conceitedness that Aideé finds it highly unlikely that she’ll ever fully join them . . . not that she particularly wants her to do so, given the coldness and malice Aideé can sometimes sense and even occasionally catch a glimpse of, lurking at the back of the girl’s eyes.

 **07.) Disconcerting:** Varykino is so serenely beautiful that the peacefulness of the place is actually (more than) a little disconcerting, in comparison to the aura of anxiety and nervous energy surrounding the Palace and permeating so much of the rest of the planet, though she must admit that the tranquility of the place could and would likely appeal to and even grow on her, under other, less dangerous circumstances.

 **08.) Chosen:** As it turns out, this third class of handmaiden trainees was not only chosen mostly of orphans (fosterlings or adoptees with little to no surviving immediate family), but also of girls either raised in or closely befriended by noble households where they would have learned most all of the gentler arts that are associated with being a Queen’s chosen companion, and so their training is going to consist almost entirely of a crash course in physical defense, offense, and the use of fairly simple weapons (knives, blasters, some old-fashioned projectile weapons, etc.) as well as a series of tests meant to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses in other areas, so that the principal handmaidens will know best where to place them and with whom among the earlier two classes to pair them up, for more practical study and hands-on experience, when their vastly truncated training is at an end and they are recalled to the Palace to begin their active service, due to the increasing threat posed the Queen by the argumentative and greedy Trade Federation.

 **09.) Condition:** With the exception of Dormé and, oddly enough, possibly also a wiry little girl with a heart-shaped face by the name of Ellessé Veganis, Aideé can tell that she is in the best overall condition and has had the greatest amount of training with both offensive and defensive weaponry and fighting tactics, and so she is careful to make herself over into a sort of secondary teacher and a source of reassurance, support, and gentle goading for the other girls, to try to minimize both their obvious discomfort and embarrassment over their lack of experience and physical strength and endurance and to encourage them to focus on learning as much as they possibly can rather than agonizing over what they do not already know how to do or cannot yet do completely or all that well.

 **10.) Agreement:** Put a blade of any kind in Dormé’s hands, and she becomes an object of grace and beauty in motion, a dance of pure and easily potentially deadly poetry, and Aideé’s heart and soul burn at the thought of the kind of awful family life Dormé must have had – to be so lovely and accomplished and so driven and yet to have so little faith in herself or in other people – so much so that all she can do is nod in grim agreement when Etté sadly and rather darkly notes, “Either her parents never should have had children, or else she should have been taken away from them, for her own safety and well-being, long since.”

 **11.) Threat:** The girl with the deceptively sleepy, cruel eyes, Rosé Ganesa, is a threat not only to the unity of the class, behind Dormé, but to the health and well-being of the other girls, as well: she is a user who takes what she wants from others, wooing individuals to her with flattery and soft words only to turn about and drop them when they are of no more immediate use to her and then viciously mocking them if they protest against this mean and thoughtless treatment, and, after finding a second girl reduced to a sobbing mess by Rosé’s malice, she makes up her mind to try to lodge a formal complaint, to see if they can’t get the conscienceless little bitch out of the training program before her selfish, casually cruel ways can get someone seriously hurt.

 **12.) Right:** Captain Panaka insults her by telling her not to waste his time with juvenile gossip and catty complaints and neither Sabé nor Saché – the two of Amidala’s principal handmaidens most closely involved with the handmaiden training process – are available, but Yané comes out and listens to her with a quiet gravity and then solemnly informs her that Panaka had no right to speak to her in such a way and that Sabé and Saché both vehemently protested Rosé’s placement in the class but that, unfortunately, since the Queen technically gave control over the handmaiden selection to Panaka (to make the man feel as if he had more input, in matters of security for the Queen, so that he hopefully would not seek to interfere with the guardian function of the handmaidens themselves), there is nothing anyone can do about Rosé – or indeed about any of the other few unsuitable individuals Panaka unfortunately chose to admit to the first and second training classes – unless someone actually catches her doing something illegal or else patently immoral or in violation of her handmaiden oaths, and that Yané will meet with the other girls about Rosé, to seek to warn them about her, but that she recommends not making it obvious that they are watching her, so that they can perhaps lull Rosé into a false sense of security and so be more likely to catch her at something that will justify dismissing her from the program, no matter what Panaka might prefer.

 **13.) Sideways:** Things so sideways with the Trade Federation so suddenly and so rapidly that they are yanked back out of Varykino after only a week, and it is with a feeling of swiftly lowering doom that she finds herself reentering the Palace only to be serenaded by the sound of shrilling, ear-piercing alarms.

 **14.) Broken:** The wound itself is not so serious, but the blow to her ribs _is_ – that bitch Essé has broken some of her ribs, she can tell, and it hurts so much that she cannot keep herself from crying out in pain (spitting up blood as she does so), though a part of her would frankly rather die than yield the satisfaction of a scream – and, afterwards, though she tries as hard as she can to focus on what’s going on, she loses most of the time of the occupation to a feverish haze of unending pain and misery, too hurt and sick in her dark cell to be all that aware of anything but her own discomfort.

 **15.) Triumphant:** She is given no time to recover from her wounds: when the doors to the makeshift cell are opened and friends come to get her out, she sees the telltale flash of reflected light from a laser scope, and, despite the agony of her ribs, she forces herself to move, rapidly placing herself between the woman in the crowd who looks the most like Queen Amidala (Dormé, as it happens, in her decoy dress, though she has no time to really register that it isn’t Padmé Amidala herself) and that glare, perishing with a wildly triumphant smile on her lips as the shield of her body stops the blaster bolt from traveling any further than her own flesh.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU (in my defense, though, when I started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Aideé. She'll be showing up again, in a more prominent role, whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for an AU novel that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!


End file.
